12/01/2009

New Fox News piece: Think 'Climate-Gate' Is Nonevent? Think Again

President Obama's climate czar, Carol M. Browner, and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs might think that Climate-gate is a nonevent, but on Monday Pennsylvania State University announced that it was launching an investigation into the academic conduct of Michael Mann, the school's Director of the Earth System Science Center. And Tuesday, Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia, announced that he would stand aside as director while his university conducted an investigation.

Dozens of researchers at other institutions could soon face similar investigations. While Dr. Jones has been the center of much of the discussion because the e-mails were obtained from the server at his university, Mann is named in about 270 of the over 1,000 e-mails, many of which detail disturbing and improper academic behavior.

Last week, Mann told USA Today that the controversy over the leaked e-mails was simply a "smear campaign to distract the public from the reality of the problem and the need to confront it head-on in Copenhagen" next week at the climate summit.

Take one of Mann's e-mail exchanges with Jones. In an e-mail entitled "IPCC & FOI" (referring to the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Freedom of Information Act) Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, wrote Dr. Mann: "Mike: Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re [the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report]? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new e-mail address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."

Mann acknowledges that he received the e-mail, but . . .

By Wednesday, December 9, this had about 210,000 page hits at Fox News.

It is really ridiculous to discuss this subject. Conservatives don't trust anybody as an authority on this subject (nor other subjects) because there is some massive conspiracy.

Call me liberal, but I'm not, I think we should listen to experts and throw the bloody liers and cheaters under the bus. The whole thing is not a conspiracy. Do climate scientists "know all", of course not, nobody does. Like in medicine, once you know an effective way to treat a disease you get started doing so.

Not related and far easier to remedy as there were fewer companies involved but remember the ozone hole? Man took the naturally occuring fluorine from 0.6 parts per billion to 2 parts per billion. The Montreal Protocol was enacted and we are controlling this (more or less). I think this is illustrative to how very small gases (parts per billion in this case) could cause major damage to our environment. CO2, which is not a forcing but is a feedback mechanism is in parts per billion. The only question is whether we have stepped over a tipping point and if the small percentage that man has added to the naturally occuring CO2 is "too much". We really won't know this for 100 or so years. An even then, conservatives will probably say this is a natural cycle. So, do you see how fruitless discussing this is? If it weren't relatively easy to solve the ozone issue we'd all have skin cancer at this point. You can thank the liberal conspiracy of scientists (NASA) for figuring this out and proposing a solution.